Tag: Bleeding Heart

Dinner With John White At The Bleeding Heart, 13 June 2017

It was John’s turn to choose venue this time.

It occurred to me as Janie and I were driving back to London from Southport, on the Monday, that I hadn’t yet heard from John about our arrangements for the next day. But by the time we got home and I got round to checking my e-mails, John had written:

I have gone traditional and local – The Bleeding Heart.  I don’t know if you have eaten there before but it has become one of my favourites since moving to the area.  We can have a drink in the Mitre beforehand also one of my favourite pubs in the locality; a real proper boozer although I don’t think you could call it a local unless you include all the local people who work here but reside elsewhere.

Anyway it’s booked for 7.  Why don’t you pop round to my new gaff when you are ready.  I can give you a quick tour of the offices now they are fully furnished and occupied, then head for a pint before determining whether to gamble on the wicket gate being open to Bleeding Heart Yard.

John had obviously forgotten that I used to work for Binder Hamlyn in St Bride Street and that The Bleeding Heart had been the staff canteen (for special occasions) back then…and indeed the Mitre was one of our regular haunts too in the Binders days.

In fact, I had returned to The Bleeding Heart fairly recently, with Micky, but it is certainly a place where I am very happy to dine again.

So we implemented John’s plan to the full – I managed to get to the BACTA offices in Ely Place around 18:15. The guided tour of the offices didn’t take long.

Then we retired to one of the little snug bars at Ye Olde Mitre, finding a good corner table for ye olde gits to swap stories over a drink. John was very pleased to learn of our meeting with Frank Dillon in Southport. I showed John the pictures (the write up was not yet writ). We also discussed the election and plenty else besides, before moving on through the wicket gate to Bleeding Heart Yard.

We were in the main Bleeding Heart restaurant that evening. John started with a raviolo of ricotta cheese, herbs, pine nuts and stuff, I started with a smoked salmon and Dorset crab thingie. I then went on to try the calves liver, while John opted for the roast fillet of Scottish beef with slow braised cheeks. As oft we do, we swapped samples of each other’s dishes before tucking in. All the dishes were predictably excellent, as was the service.

We both enjoyed a dry-but-fruity German Riesling with our starters, with John moving on to a Malbec and me moving on to a Barbera D’Alba with the main.

John went for the cheese afterwards, while I chose a strawberry parfait served with the recommended Tokay.

It was a super evening, albeit an indulgent one. I would have slept very well on the back of all that indulgence, indeed I did so until the sounds of sirens and helicopters (attending to the Grenfell Tower Block tragedy) woke me up in the early hours of Wednesday, making reality and disparity bite.

Dinner With Micky, Bleeding Heart, 15 April 2015

After an early exit from the office, Micky helps me out by looking at mum’s old engagement ring, I then help him out (not that he needs help) by sponsoring dinner at The Bleeding Heart.

An old haunt of the Binder Hamlyn crowd, perhaps I have known the place for as long as Micky has known it…no probably not quite as long. Since 1988 in my case.

Still, I hadn’t been for years and what a treat to get glorious spring weather so we could take our dinner in the yard.

Micky found a particularly good rose wine with which he persevered all evening; I joined him after trying a couple of the excellent Kiwi whites (a speciality of the otherwise resolutely French establishment).

Micky knows the Bleeding Heart crowd well and has more stamina than me, so in the end he suggested that I leave him to it. Having done plenty of eating and drinking, moreover with fatigue creeping up on me, I was delighted to comply.

Changing Money: Communities & Longer Term Finance & You, Ian Harris, Gresham College, Museum Of London, 16 November 2010

This was my second Gresham Lecture (the first was in 2008 – click here).

A larger audience for this one, at the Museum of London; slightly more intimidating feel to the platform too (Barnards Inn Hall sort-of feels like home).

Still, by all accounts it went well. But then people would say that, to me, wouldn’t they? You can judge for yourself, here is a link to all of the resources for the lecture – transcript, slides, the lot.

Or take a look at the YouTube below if it is just the lecture you are interested in:

Guns, pens, cattle, face-painting…all money, of sorts.

After the lecture and post-lecture reception, we decamped to the Bleeding Heart Bistro for dinner.

Binder Hamlyn Management Consultants Christmas Lunch Virtually All Day, 14 December 1988

The headline captures the text from that Wednesday and that one sentence tells much of the tale.

The so-called lunch was at The Bleeding Heart that year. It is still a top notch place. Writing 30 years later, although I don’t go there all that often I have been quite recently:

Dinner With John White At The Bleeding Heart, 13 June 2017

But I digress.

Michael Mainelli had clearly made a special point of locating me near to his place. He conducted a rather unsubtle sort-of interview over the hours of the event. I had been hired despite Michael, not by him nor under his auspices, but while he was away on holiday for a week, somewhat in contravention of his request to the other partners not to hire anyone while he was away. So he was checking me out big time those first few months. History suggests I passed the test.

Reduced To Tears By My First Consultancy Assignment, 27 January 1989

I do also remember Peter Flory (who was my mentor on the Save The Children Fund project) “going off on one” afterwards, because he thought it inappropriate for Michael to grill me in that way at a staff party. It is my first proper memory of meeting Michael, although he is pretty sure we had a quick chat a couple of weeks earlier, when I first arrived at Binders.

I think I might have endeared myself to William Casey at that event too, by recognising and praising his choice of wine, Chateau Musar, which one or two less knowledgeable folk had been sniffy about, imagining “cheap Lebanese wine”. Oh no, this is (and was then) top notch stuff and a good food match too.

ChateauMusar1999

It clearly was a very lengthy and boozy affair. I remember little else about it. I would love to hear from others who might remember some factoids about hat particular occasion. We lunched at the Bleeding Heart for Christmas several times.